First some Dragon Ball, then some D&D and then a nice evening seppuku while listening to Whispered
I don't know at which moment in life you wake up thinking "I know what the world needs. The world needs a samurai melodic death metal sung in English. And I will deliver it" but I bet this moment must be pretty awesome. Or maybe in Finland something like this is normal. Anyway, it happened, and the music was created.
The story would probably end here if not for overly obsessive musicians, forever in a race with other obsessive musicians to create even more absurdly good melodic death. Kalmah, Norther, Ensiferum, Omnium Gatherum, Swallow The Sun, Wintersun, Insomnium- the competition in Finland is strong, so strange gimmick ideas like that samurai crap can be a key to success. The true winners are us, listeners, who get to witness something new every now and then.
Whispered, because that's the band name, is hungered for famed, so they delivered meloded deathed metaled in japaned climated. kill me
2 albums so far, third on the way, single is out and its delicious
Lets review what we have already out, shall me? me shall, I hope it will be shorter than my normal reviews, as my lame jokes and comments are very tiring on the long run (all my ex gfs agree on that one).
Oh, the band had a lot of lineup changes, and I'm too lazy to check who played where on which record, forgive me. The only major thing that changed is the absence of keys on the second album, me sad.
Thousand Swords debut starts with Hajimari, and I won't translate any Japanese to English because I suck. Typical intro track, instrumental, I suck at reviewing instrumentals (in particular to general sucking at reviews) so no comment here, skip!
To Thousand Swords. Choirs at the beginning show that we are in for a ride through great guitar riffs fighting with synths, even some bass is heard! When vocals enter with first guitar solo you are allowed to fall in love. But vocals are quite saliva driven, it's hard to understand the lyrics through the whole album. And it's a real shame, lyrics are a very strong part of this band.
The band on the disc is clearly extremely talented so it has a lot of progressive elements here and there to keep them from falling asleep. But it's an easier listen than Persefone, songs are built rather solid and except for chosen few the style is still melodic death metal, not some prog melodeath and such. Chorus in 1000 knives has some epic choirs and the song is mostly about some devilish warrior looking for a challenge in fighting 1000 swords to tell if he's weaker than some random_human or if he's above the gods.
As I said, lyrics are strong, even if I find some voice of a wiseman telling a story pretty annoying the vocals still make up for it. At least in this, the last song on the album- Blade in the Snow- is an example of a too long epic song, that starts yarround 3rd minute and it's great for 2 minutes when the annoying voice returns and shows here and there through the song. The main riff though is what you want to hear everytime you ride a horse into a battle, so basically every Tuesday afternoon for me.
Between those two we have the main juice- few fast songs with one slow in the middle (Dead Cold Inside), medium fast hit song Blindfold (from the music video), great lyrics, much meaning, such samurai, wow. Solos are solid in every song, but the riffs are where the guitars shine the most, and Fear Never Within must be the most progressive of the bunch, after many listens it still surprises me with some elements. Blindfold is your choice if ya want to show the band to someone. Also, keys. Oh, keyboards are just wonderful, like a Kalmah with even more power. I didn't do the review song by song because recently I'm not in a mood for writing- I forced myself because they renewed my inner flame of passion towards music and I feel like I own them something in return.
Summary:
Vocals: 8/10
Guitars: 10-/10
Bass: 9/10
Keys: 10/10
Drums: 10=/10
Additional:
+synths, orchestrations, background
+weird idea but almost flawless in execution
+lyrics, oh those lyrics
+good song placement on the album, rare thing
+nice running time, artwork, booklet, it's worth your money
+ I never skip thanks: "if we forgot you, please be offended, punish us by buying us a beer and paying our rent, we hate it" - seriously, truly a band for me.
- some annoying voice in my head, telling me that earth, mountains, rivers are hidden in the nothingness, and in the nothingness they are revealed- no shit sherlock
- another annoying voice in my head (I have a bunch of these on a daily basis) telling me that samurai are just as ninjas and should be slain with a bottle of rum and a yo ho ho! #pirate4lyfe
Final score: 100,5% - fav track still Dead Cold Inside, but I will post Blindfold under
whoops, pirates pirated my review D:
PS: I wanted to review both of them at once but only one arrived for now, so I will do it in 2 parts, third will arrive with their third album.
PPS: I'm not making fun of Finnish guys singing in English about a Japanese culture. I myself am an emperor penguin from Canada living in Poland reviewing in English an album of a Finnish group making japanese-influenced music sung in English. What a beautiful world we live in.
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